


Good Omens: The Tale of the Blundering Spies

by springhorton



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Relationship, M/M, World War II, alternative history
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22212709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/springhorton/pseuds/springhorton
Summary: Much about the world changed while Crowley spent the last seventy years napping. It's now 1939, cars have replaced horse drawn carriages, there's electricity and telephones in every house...and Britain has just declared war on Germany. Luckily for Crowley, hell thinks it's all his doing, but now he has to find a way to insinuate himself into the situation.Meanwhile, Aziraphale has long since gotten over their argument in St James' Park, but he's beginning to wonder just what happened to the wily old demon. He can't help but notice the state of the world too, but technically, angels shouldn't really get involved. However, that all changes when he notices some unsavory characters hanging around the bookshop.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	1. Prologue

Crowley yawned and stretched a stretch that seemed to go on for eternity. He couldn’t be sure exactly how long he’d been asleep, but when he got up and sauntered into the bathroom, he screeched and almost fainted at what he saw in the mirror. His hair was long and scraggly as was the beard that almost concealed his face. Before he could reach for a razor though, his thoughts suddenly turned to Aziraphale. Was it too much to think that the angel may have been worried about him, wondered why he hadn’t seen the demon for so long and come looking for him? There was no angel in his flat though, and the thought almost sent him back to his bed for further slumber. 

As Crowley turned from the bathroom, though, he was hit by another thought; the world had changed while he’d been gone. There was a heightened sense of evil, fear, and desperation in the air, and he wondered what had happened. Having completely forgotten about shaving, he stumbled back to his study, still getting the hang of walking again. He pushed aside thick curtains, wincing at the sunlight, and looked out at the street below. 

Crowley’s eyes widened and a small, for the moment inexplicable, smile crossed his face. When he’d gone to sleep, horse drawn carriages slowly rumbled down cobblestone streets, and the city was still building its underground railroad. As Crowley’s eyes swept the street below, he noticed a sign for what had to be one of its stations, throngs of people walking much too fast, but what really caught his eye was the new carriages. They had no horses, and he wondered what genius human had thought of such an invention. 

“I’ve missed so much,” he mumbled wistfully. Just before he’d gone to sleep, he’d bought himself the latest invention, a telephone. It hadn’t done him much good as almost no one else had one and the lines were just barely starting to go up. He imagined all of that had changed now, though, so he went to the small, strange looking device sitting on his desk and picked up the mouth piece and receiver. Nothing happened. 

“Oh right. It needs some kind of electricity,” he said to himself, and snapped his fingers. He wasn’t sure what the modern equivalent was, but suddenly, his flat had it. As he sat, and tried to figure out who he was supposed to call, a buzzing sound came through his receiver. 

“Ah, Crowley,” Beezlebub said on the other end of the line. “We’ve been trying to reach you.” 

“Oh, um...” 

“We wanted to congratulate you for all your work on World War Two.” 

“World War Two?” Crowley repeated, wondering vaguely when World War One had happened. 

“With Britain declaring war on Germany, it’s now official,” Beezlebub continued, oblivious to Crowley’s confusion. “Soon the whole continent will be at each other’s throats.” 

“Mmm...yes...great.” 

“Keep up the good work.” 

“Right,” Crowley said unenthusiastically and then heard the line go dead. He replaced the mouthpiece and receiver, and stared at them for a moment. It was time he figured out what the humans had been up to while he was asleep.


	2. Eight Months Later

Aziraphale, known as Mr A Z Fell for the last hundred and thirty years (yet somehow never drawing suspicion over his longevity), sat behind the cash register in the largest and most elegant bookshop in Soho. The shop was quiet, and at the moment, utterly devoid of customers, just how Aziraphale preferred it. The Principality held the morning paper in somewhat shaky hands. The headlines had been the same for months now; all about the war with Germany. Aziraphale had been convinced it would all blow over, so to speak. Surely the humans remembered the horror of the First World War, not all that long ago, and would quickly mend things between them. Or so he’d thought. It was May 1940 though, eight months since Britain had declared war. 

Aziraphale scanned the paper, wishing he could simply put it down and pretend nothing was happening. That was generally heaven’s policy after all, not to interfere. He couldn’t ignore this though; it effected his daily life too much. Just a few days earlier, the country had chosen Winston Churchill to be their Prime Minister, a man with even more war strategy than the last Prime Minister. Aziraphale couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It wasn’t like he wanted Germany to win or anything like that; they’d been doing very Bad Things indeed, but it was all becoming rather frightening. He’d seen plenty of things in his roughly six thousand years on earth, but nothing had compared to this. With a despaired shake of his head, he turned the page, hoping to find something more pleasant to read about. As he did so, though, he heard the tinkling sound of his front door bell. 

With a sigh, Aziraphale folded up the paper and tucked in onto a shelf underneath the cash register. The strange thing was, when he looked up, there didn’t seem to be anyone there. With a frown, he stepped around the counter and glanced about the large, cluttered shop. He made his way to the spiral staircase, wondering if, maybe, this person hadn’t gone upstairs. He couldn’t see anyone, so he shrugged and turned to go back to the cash register. As he did so, he practically knocked over a small, weathered man in large glasses. 

“Oh, pardon me,” Aziraphale soothed, reaching out to steady the man, who shrank from his touch. The angel’s frown returned, but only for a moment, before he smiled cordially and said, “Is there something I can help you find?” 

“I’m looking for books of prophecy,” the man answered in a quiet, accented voice. 

Aziraphale didn’t take much notice of the accent, instead his face lit up at the request. “Oh yes, I’m quite fond of books of prophecy myself.” He took a breath, preparing to list the tomes he possessed, when it occurred to him that he didn’t really want to part with them. “Was that a German accent I detected?” he asked by way of changing the subject. 

“Oh, um, yes. My parents brought me over as a small boy but I never managed to lose the German sound,” the small man answered, his enlarged eyes shifting away behind his glasses. 

“Well, I’m afraid that the few volumes I do have are part of my own, private collection. They are not for sale.” 

The disappointment on the little old man’s face was palpable, but Aziraphale could sense a twitch of anger there as well. It was gone as soon as it had appeared, but the angel found it disturbing anyway. Still, he kept his slightly nervous smile in place, and gently began ushering the man toward the door. 

“Thank you anyway,” he said pleasantly. “If there’s anything else I can help you with, please do come back...during normal business hours. I’m afraid we’ll have to be closing for the day.” 

“It’s only noon,” the man pointed out, glancing down at his watch. 

“Yes, well...” 

“When are normal business hours, then?” 

“Um...truthfully? Whenever I’m here.” With that, Aziraphale gently pushed the man over the door’s threshold and shut it behind him. Then he locked it and sighed in relief. He turned the sign to closed and backed away, feeling like that was one of the stranger customer encounters he’d had. Something about the unassuming little man had felt very wrong, like he was hiding something. It hadn’t helped that he’d been looking for books of prophecy, or that, in the current climate, he’d been German. Aziraphale had heard rumors of the many ethereal and occult objects Hitler had been trying to gather up. He brushed away the thought, though. It was silly to think that some German agent would simply turn up in his shop, looking for books. 

As he stood at the window, calming himself, he noticed a large car drive by. It struck him as odd, as the car first rolled by the shop very slowly, then took off at a speed he didn’t think possible for the confines of central London. He stared after it for a moment, and then chalked it up as another strange occurrence in what was, apparently, a very strange day. 

From the driver’s seat of a brand new 3 and a half litre Bentley, oddly enough, actually made by Rolls-Royce, Crowley stared through the window at Aziraphale’s Soho bookshop. A small smile touched the corners of his mouth. The angel had done well for himself. Not that it was really a big surprise, he was an angel after all; it wasn’t very difficult to miracle oneself into good circumstances. His smile broadened and he chuckled to himself at the thought that, knowing Aziraphale though, he’d probably done the whole thing as legitimately as possible. 

Crowley had been driving by the bookshop at least once a week ever since waking up eight months ago. The first things he’d done, after shaving and cutting his hair, was buy himself a new wardrobe (sadly, it was a somewhat boring time for clothing) and find himself a car like the one he’d seen out his flat’s window. It had taken a bit of doing, first figuring out what the thing was called, then finding the right brand, and then, much to his delight, he’d found out that this particular model of Bentley was a custom job. He’d gone with a two-tone black and grey special, that included a few touches of his own. It was one of a kind, and he loved everything about it. Still, there was something about the big, beautiful car that screamed to have a passenger. 

He took a deep breath, willing the silly thought to go away and leave him alone, and sped off toward Harringay. This part of London was full of warehouses and other commercial enterprises, much of it now being diverted towards uses in the war. Crowley had rented one for himself, and it currently sat full of a secret arsenal of weapons and other strategic equipment. Unbeknownst to his neighbours, it was all to be sold to the German army, not the British. He’d been busy since waking from his slumber. He’d quickly found a way to alleviate his boredom, but it was a tricky business, being an arms dealer, especially considering his weapons were very, very special. 

He was meeting with an intermediary that morning, a man who thought he was very clever indeed, for buying munitions from right under the British noses. What he didn’t realise was that Crowley had no intention of helping Germany win the war. The truth was, he didn’t have anything invested in either side of the war, other than keeping up his good reputation in hell, but considering he and Aziraphale had called Britain home for hundreds of years now, a part of him couldn’t really bring himself to side with the bad guys on this one. In fact, he couldn’t imagine at all anything happening to the bookshop Aziraphale loved some much. So, Crowley had made weapons, made himself a big name in certain circles to ensure the Germans would buy some from him, and made sure no one ever found out that the weapons didn’t work. They looked real, fired real rounds, and shells, and whatever else they were supposed to do, but they never quite hit their targets or killed anyone. It had made Crowley a lot of money, and had made the bosses in hell very pleased.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley meets with a secret Nazi operative, and Aziraphale has a nibble.

Crowley sped past what was once mostly farmland and a few warehouses. Since the turn of the century, though, residential areas had sprung up, along with shops, parks and factories in Harringay. It looked like most any other day, people out shopping, kids playing on the sidewalk or heading off to school, but Crowley could sense a tension in the air, an underlying feeling of fear of what might come next. As he whipped past the Ever-Ready factory on St Ann’s Road, he felt a strange premonition of the building not being there much longer. It made him clench his jaw, but he drove on. 

There were still a few warehouses tucked away in the urbanised neighbourhood, and Crowley had rented one as soon as the war started...after having shaved and all. He was trying his best to make the best of a bad situation, but it didn’t stop the fact that the Germans were making most of their own, very real and very efficient weapons, or that everything seemed to be going South. Still, as the Bentley pulled into the shoddy, uncared for car park, Crowley greeted his buyer with a bright smile. Secretly, though, he wondered if this wasn’t the start of the Armageddon the Great Plan had prophesised. 

“Ah, guten tag, Herr Busch,” Crowley said cheerfully, at least getting some satisfaction that the man was named after a shrub. Even more satisfaction as he watched the man’s face go white as he glanced around nervously. 

“English, please, Mister Crowley,” he hissed. “We don’t need prying ears finding out what we’re up to.” 

“Oh goodness, no, that wouldn’t do at all,” Crowley replied, feigning horror. Then he showed his buyer into the warehouse where he kept all the weapons he’d cleverly designed and miracled up. They looked perfect in every way on the outside, and even functioned properly should the buyer wish to test them out, but somehow, in getting them from London to where they were going, they would cease to operate properly. It was never overt and never something that would lead back to Crowley, but something about the weapons and munitions that he sold just didn’t seem to hit their target right. 

In the end, Herr Busch was immensely satisfied with what Crowley had to offer, and the transaction went quickly and enthusiastically. How his buyers got their goods to where they were going was something he had a hand in as well. Better to have his weapons on the battlefield than someone else’s. Once he was done at the warehouse, he made his way back into the city centre. Beyond simply selling faulty weapons to the Germans, he also kept a few contacts in the underworld of spies and information dealers, and decided it was time to pay a little visit. 

Crowley’s Bently pulled in to a narrow side street where he most assuredly wasn’t allowed to park. He did so anyway, without anyone seeming to notice. It was a recognisable car and the last thing he needed was to draw attention, so he simply willed the passersby not to see it. He nonchalantly got out, glanced around, and then stepped down to a basement door. 

It turned out that Crowley was actually meeting another demon that day, one who’d infiltrated the Nazis and was posing as one of them. Being a demon, he automatically assumed that Crowley was on their side too. It made things easier that way. As the door opened, allowing a brief moment of light to pierce the darkness of the secret club, the demon looked up and waved Crowley over. 

He was young looking and impossibly slim, and reminded Crowley very much of Eric, who most of the other demons simply referred to as Disposable. As he sat down, he gave the man a long look wondering if it wasn’t actually one of the Erics in disguise. Either way, he’d always found it hilarious that the demon had infiltrated the Nazis considering his...complexion. It was the nature of reality on Earth, though, the humans saw what they wanted to see. That’s why it was so easy to hide the Bentley despite its hulking size. A demon simply had to put out “nothing to see here” vibes and no one saw a thing. 

“So, what have I missed?” Crowley asked. It had been a few weeks since their last meeting, Crowley having been laying low after a mishap with a Nazi operative and a blender. 

Maybe Eric leaned in with a sly smile. “This is gonna sound crazy, but from what I hear, Hitler has Himmler looking for all kinds of weird things.” 

Crowley looked unimpressed. “Like what?” 

The smile faltered on Maybe Eric’s face, but he recovered it, looking even more proud of himself. He leaned a bit closer, until Crowley’s arching eyebrow made him think it wasn’t a good idea. “My sources, who are very reliable by the way, tell me that it’s everything from the holy grail to fortune tellers.” 

Crowley’s heart skipped a beat. “You mean, he’s dabbling in the occult?” 

“I told you it was going to sound crazy.” 

“Do you think he knows about...us?” 

Maybe Eric shrugged and leaned back in his chair, feeling satisfied. 

Something clicked in Crowley’s brain as he realised what the other demon had said. “Fortune tellers? Like books of prophecy?” 

“Yeah, maybe.” 

Crowley’s jaw clenched and he mumbled, “Aziraphale.” 

The Principality was currently sitting at a lovely little lounge table at Kettner’s in Soho, enjoying a Sunday brunch of Eggs Benedict, French Toast, baked beans, Darjeeling tea, and a glass of Rose. He was seriously considering having the kitchen bring him an ice cream sundae when he was finished. It seemed fitting being Sunday and all, and it sounded delicious. As he took another warm bite of egg, he glanced around, noticing that most of the comfy, stuffed chairs were empty. The War seemed to be doing that. 

Aziraphale sighed, his delicious brunch not quite as tasty as it was a moment ago. Perhaps he’d save the ice cream for another time. Still...his table was tucked into a little nook, off by himself, and it was a quiet, comfortable place to get away from it all. It wouldn’t hurt if he simply sat for a while, savouring his brunch. It’s not like he had to open today (or any other day for that matter), so he simply sat and smiled to himself, allowing himself a moment to pretend that all was right with the world. It would have been better if Crowley had been there to share in the moment, he realised with a start, but he swept the thought away and moved on to the French Toast. 

A couple of hours later, when he was sufficiently stuffed, had gone through another glass of Rose, and read a bit of a new book, he figured he might as well head back to the bookshop. He had a stack of new books to go through. Plus, the waitstaff had started to politely hint that the brunch service was over. Not that they would ever come out and ask him to leave; he was much too good a customer for that. 

As Aziraphale made his way down the street to his bookshop, he glanced again at the new book he’d brought with him. It was called Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie and had Hercule Poirot involved in a courtroom drama. Though he may not have looked it, and despite the stories causing him a great deal of anxiety, the angel was secretly a very big fan of the author. Her characters were compelling and her stories exciting...even if they were about people murdering one another. He dipped his nose into the book as he strolled, until he reached the street corner. Then he inched off the curb, barely putting his toe into the street, to be met with a honking horn as a motorised vehicle sped past. 

Aziraphale took a shaky breath and slipped the book into his jacket pocket. “I still can’t get used to those things,” he mumbled to himself. From there, he crossed the street to his bookshop, this time making sure to check both ways for oncoming cars. When he was certain he wouldn’t be discorporated, he cheerfully crossed over, pulling the key to the front door out of his inside pocket as he stepped back onto sidewalk. As he started to put the key in the lock, though, he noticed something peculiar. He stepped away from the front door and its Romanesque pillars, and over to one of the rows of side windows. With a gasp, he saw that the last one had been broken. Just one pane was missing, but it also looked like a few of the books that had been sitting on a table in front of it were missing. Aziraphale’s face flushed and he whipped around as if the culprit might still be standing nearby, gloating. All he saw were oblivious humans, going about their daily errands, though. 

The angel quickly stepped back to the front door, and went inside, making sure to lock the door behind him. Then he rushed to the broken window to see what books were missing. It wasn’t anything terribly important to him, but it worried him nonetheless. With a hurt frown, he miracled the window back to new, and spent the rest of the day wondering why anyone would want to steal a handful of random books.


End file.
